[ntp:questions] determining time difference between two not-directly-connected computers

matthew.garman at gmail.com matthew.garman at gmail.com
Sun Jan 7 17:29:03 UTC 2007


On Sun, Jan 07, 2007 at 12:30:59AM -0500, Danny Mayer wrote:
> matthew.garman at gmail.com wrote:
> > I've got two (x86_64 Linux) machines between which I need to
> > determine the relative time difference.  The problem is, the
> > machines are not directly connected and only one is connected to
> > the Internet.
> > ...
> 
> What do you think that NTP does? and why don't you think that after 20+
> years of engineering that it doesn't do a much better job?

I think NTP syncrhonizes one computer's time to another.

However, the two computers in question don't have a direct
connection.  And syncing the one machine to the common server via
NTP through VPN is not what I want to do.

In our application, we need to know if there's even a few
milliseconds of time difference between the two machines... and I'm
just looking for some feedback on how I can accurately measure that
difference.

And I'm even curious about what kind of time difference we should
expect when both machines are NTP time sync'ed, albeit to different
NTP servers.

Thanks,
Matt




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